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Reader ! walk up at once {it will soon he too late) and 
buy at a perfectly ruinous rate — 



(/ like^ as a thing that the reader^ s first fancy may stnke, 

an oldfashioned iiile-page, 

such as presents a tabular view of the volume's contents) ' 



{Mrs. Malapropos word) 



A VOCAL AND MUSICAL MEDLEY. 



who accompanies himself with a rub-a-dub-dub, full of spirit and grace^ 
on the top of the tub. 



EABLE FOR CRITICS ; 

OR, BETTER, 



A GLANCE 

> AT A FEW OF OUR LITERARY PROGENIES 

FROM 

THE TUB OF DIOGENES; 



THAT IS, 

A SERIES OF JOKES 

13s ^ Wiontitvinl <atti^ 






BOSTON: 



TIOKNOR AND FIELDS 

M DCCC LXIV. 



^c^r^ 



0^ 



i^liU 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1848, by 

George P. Putnam, 

in the Clerk's OfRce of the District Court for the Southern District of 
New- York. 




It being the commonest mode of procedure, I premise a few 

candid remarks 
To THE Reader : 

This trifle, begun to please only myself and my own 
private fancy, was laid on the shelf. But some friends, who 
had seen it, induced me, by dint of saying they liked it, to put 
it in print. That is, having come to that very conclusion, I 
consulted them wiien it could make no confusion. For, 
(though in the gentlest of ways,) they had hinted it was 
scarce worth the while, I should doubtless have printed it. 

I began it, intending a Fable, a frail, slender thing, rhyme- 

ywinged, with a sting in its tail. But, by addings and 

alterings not previously planned, — digressions chance-hatched, 

like birds' eggs in the sand, — and dawdlings to suit every 

whimsy's demand, (always freeing the bird which I held in mj^ 

hand, for the two perched, perhaps out of reach, in the tree,) — 

it grew by degrees to the size which you see. I was like the 

old woman that carried the calf, and my neighbors, like hers, 

a 



IV 

no doubt, wonder and laugh, and when, my strained arms with 
their grown burthen full, I call it my Fable, they call it a 
bull. 

Having scrawled at full gallop (as far as that goes) in a 
style that is neither good verse nor bad prose, and being a 
person whom nobody knows, some people will say I am rather 
more free with my readers than it is becoming to be, that 
1 seem to expect them to wait on my leisure in following 
wherever I wander at pleasure, that, in short, I take more 
than a young author's lawful ease, and laugh in a queer way 
so like Mephistopheles, that the public will doubt, as they grope 
through my rhythm, if in truth I am making fun at them or 
with them. 

So the excellent Public is hereby assured that the sale of 
my book is already secured. For there is not a poet through- 
out the whole land, but will purchase a copy or two out of 
hand, in the fond expectation of being amused in it, by seeing 
his betters cut-up and abused in it. Now, I find, by a pretty 
exact calculation, there are something like ten thousand bards 
in the nation, of that special variety whom the Review and 
Magazine critics call lofty and true, and about thirty tliousand 
{this tribe is increasing) of the kinds who are termed yw/Z of 
promise and pleasing. The Public will see by a glance at this 
schedule, that they cannot expect me to be over-sedulous about 



courting them, since it seems I have got enough fuel made 
sure of for boiling my pot. 

As for such of our poets as find not their names mentioned 
once in my pages, with praises or blames, let them send in 
THEIR CARDS, without further delay, to my friend G. P. Put- 
nam, Esquire, in Broadway, where a list will be kept with 
the strictest regard to the day and the hour of receiving the 
card. Then, taking them up as I chance to have time, (that 
is, if their names can be twisted in rhyme,) I will honestly 
give each his proper position, at the rate of one author 
to each new edition. Thus a PREMIUM is offered suffi- 
ciently HIGH (as the magazines say when they tell tlieir best 
lie) to induce bards to club their resources and buy the 
balance of every edition, until they have all of them fairly 
been run through the mill. 

One word to such readers (judicious and wise) as read 
books with something behind the mere eyes, of whom in the 
country, perhaps, there are two, including myself, gentle 
reader, and you. All the characters sketclied in this slight 
jeu d' esprit, though, it may be, they seem, here and there, 
rather free, and drawn from a Mephistophelian stand-point, 
are 7}iea7it lo be faithful, and that is the grand point, and none 
but an owl would feel sore at a rub from a jester who tells 
you, without any subterfuge, that he sits in Diogenes' tub. 



A PRELIMIiNARY NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION, 

though it well may be reckoned, of all composition, 
the species at once most delightful and healthy, is a 
thing which an author, unless he be wealthy and willing 
to pay for that kind of delight, is not, in all instances, 
called on to write. Though there are, it is said, who, 
their spirits to cheer, slip in a new title-page three times 
a year, and in this way snufF up an imaginary savor of 
that sweetest of dishes, the popular favor, — much as if a 
starved painter should fall to and treat the Ugolino inside 
to a picture of meat. 

You remember (if not, pray turn over and look) that, 
in writing the preface which ushered my book, I treated 
you, excellent Public, not merely with a cool disregard, 
but downright cavalierly. Now I would not take back 
the least thing I then said, though I thereby could butter 
both sides of my bread, for I never could see that an 
author owed aught to the people he solaced, diverted, or 
taught ; and, as for mere fame, I have long ago learned that 
the persons by whom it is finally earned, are those with 
whom your verdict weighed not a pin, unsustained by 
the higher court sitting within. 

(1) 1 



2 



But I wander from what I intended to say — that you 
have, namely, shown such a liberal way of thinking, and 
so much aesthetic perception of anonymous worth in the 
handsome reception you gave to my book, spite of some 
private piques, (having bought the first thousand in barely 
two weeks,) that I think, past a doubt, if you measured 
the phiz of your's most devotedly, Wonderful Quiz, you 
would find that its vertical section was shorter, by an 
inch and two tenths, or 'twixt that and a quarter. 

You have watched a child playing — in those won- 
drous years when belief is not bound to the eyes and the 
ears, and the vision divine is so clear and unmarred, 
that each baker of pies in the dirt is a bard? Give a 
knife and a shingle, he fits out a fleet, and, on that little 
mudpuddle over the street, his inveation, in purest good 
faith, will make sail round the globe with a puff of his 
breath for a gale, will visit, in barely ten minutes, all 
climes, and find Northwestern passages hundreds of 
times. Or, suppose the young Poet fresh stored with de- 
lights from that Bible of childhood the Arabian Nights, he 
will turn to a crony and cry, " Jack, let's play that I am 
a Genius !" Jacky straightway makes Aladdin's lamp 
out of a stone, and, for hours, they enjoy each his own 
supernatural powers. This is all very pretty and pleasant, 
but then suppose our two urchins have grown into men, 
and both have turned authors, — one says to his brother, 
" Let's play we're the American somethings or other, 
(only let them be big enough, no matter what.) Come 



you shall be Goethe or Pope, which you choose ; I'll be 
Coleridge, and both shall write mutual reviews." So 
they both (as mere strangers) before many days, send 
each other a cord of anonymous bays. Each, in piling 
his epithets, smiles in his sleeve to see what his friend 
can be made to believe ; each, in reading the other's un- 
biassed review, thinks — Here's pretty high praise, but no 
more than is true. Well, we laugh at them both, and 
yet make no great fuss when the same farce is acted to 
benefit us. Even I, who, if asked, scarce a month since, 
what Fudge meant, should have answered, the dear 
Public's critical judgment, begin to think sharpwitted 
Horace spoke sooth when he said, that the Public some- 
times hit the truth. 

In reading these lines, you perhaps have a vision of 
a person in pretty good health and condition, and yet, 
since I put forth my primary edition, I have been crushed, 
scorched, withered, used up and put down, (by Smith 
with the cordial assistance of Brown,) in all, if you put 
any faith in my rhymes, to the number of ninety-five 
several times, and, while I am writing — I tremble to 
think of it, for I may at this moment be just on the brink 
of it — Molybdostom, angry at being omitted, has begun 
a critique, — am I not to be pitied?* 

Now I shall not crush them since, indeed, for that 

* The wise Scandinavians probably called their bards by the queer- 
looking title of Scald, in a delicate way, as it were, just to hint to the world 
the hot water they always get into. 



matter, no pressure I know of could render them flatter ; 
nor wither, nor scorch them, — no action of fire could 
make either them or their articles drier; nor waste time 
in putting them down — I am thinking not their own self- 
inflation will keep them from sinking; for there's this 
contradiction about the whole bevy — though without the 
least weight, they are awfully heavy. No, my dear 
honest bore, surdo fahulam narras, they are no more to 
me than a rat in the arras. I can walk with the Doctor, 
get facts from the Don, or draw out the Lambish quintes- 
sence of John, and feel nothing more than a half-comic 
sorrow, to think that they all will be lying to-morrow 
tossed carelessly up on the waste-paper shelves, and for- 
gotten by all but their half-dozen selves. Once snug in 
my attic, my fire in a roar, I leave the whole pack of 
them outside the door. With Hakluyt or Purchas I 
wander away to the black northern seas or barbaric 
Cathay ; get fou with O'Shanter, and sober me then 
with that builder of brick-kilnish dramas, rare Ben ; 
snuff* Herbert, as holy as a flower on a grave ; with 
Fletcher wax tender, o'er Chapman grow brave ; with 
Marlowe or Kyd take a fine poet-rave ; in Very, most 
Hebrew of Saxons, find peace ; with Lycidas welter on 
vext Irish seas ; with Webster grow wild, and climb 
earthward again, down by mystical Browne's Jacob's- 
ladder-like brain, to that spiritual Pepys (Cotton's ver- 
sion) Montaigne ; find a new depth in Wordsworth, 
undreamed of before, — that divinely-inspired, wise, deep, 



tender, grand, — bore. Or, out of my study, the scholar 
thrown off, nature holds up her shield 'gainst the sneer 
and the scoff; the landscape, forever consoling and 
kind, pours her wine and her oil on the smarts of the 
mind. The waterfall, scattering its vanishing gems ; the 
tall grove of hemlocks, with moss on their stems, like 
plashes of sunlight; the pond in the woods, w^here no 
foot but mine and the bittern's intrudes ; these are all my 
kind neighbors, and leave me no wish to say aught to 
you all, my poor critics, but — pish ! I have buried the 
hatchet ; I am twisting an allumette out of one of you 
now, and relighting my calumet. In your private ca- 
pacities, come when you please, I will give you my 
hand and a fresh pipe a-piece. 

As 1 ran through the leaves of my poor litttle book, 
to take a fond author's first tremulous look, it was quite 
an excitement to hunt the errata, sprawled in as birds' 
tracks are in some kinds of strata (only these made 
things crookeder.) Fancy an heir, that a father had seen 
born well-featured and fair, turning suddenly wry-nosed, 
club-footed, squint-eyed, hare-lipped, wapper-jawed, car- 
rot-haired, from a pride become an aversion, — my case was 
yet worse. A club-foot (by way of a change) in a verse, 
I might have forgiven, an o's being wry, a botch in an e, 
or a cock in an i, — but to have the sweet babe of my brain 
served in pi ! I am not queasy-stomached, but such a 
Thyestean banquet as that was quite out of the ques- 
tion. 



In the edition now issued, no pains are neglected, 
and my verses, as orators say, stand corrected. Yet 
some blunders remain of the public's own make, which 
I wish to correct for my personal sake. For instance, a 
character drawn in pure fun and condensing the traits 
of a dozen in one, has been, as I hear by some persons 
applied to a good friend of mine, whom to stab in the 
side, as we walked along chatting and joking together, 
would not be my way. I can hardly tell whether a 
question will ever arise in which he and I should by 
any strange fortune agree, but meanwhile my esteem for 
him grows as I know him, and, though not the best judge 
upon earth of a poem, he knows what it is he is saying 
and why, and is honest and fearless, two good points 
which I have not found so rife I can easily smother my 
love for them, whether on my side or 'tother. 

For my other anonymi, you may be sure that I know 
what is meant by a caricature, and what by a portrait. 
There «re those who think it is capital fun to be spattering 
their ink on quiet unquarrelsome folk, but the minute the 
game changes sides and the others begin it, they see 
something savage and horrible in it. As for me I re- 
spect neither women or men for their gender, nor own 
any sex in a pen. I choose just to hint to some causeless 
unfriends that, as far as I know, there are always two 
ends (and one of them heaviest, too) to a staff, and two 
parties also to every good laugh. 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 



PflCEBUs, sitting one day in a laurel-tree's shade, 
Was reminded of Daphne, of whom it was made, 
For the god being one day too warm in his wooing, 
She took to the tree to escape his pursuing ; 
Be the cause what it might, from his offers she shrunk, 
And, Ginevra-like, shut herself up in a trunk ; 
And, though 'twas a step into which he had driven her, 
He somehow or other had never forgiven her ; 
Her memory he nursed as a kind of a tonic. 
Something bitter to chew when he'd play the Byron ic, 
And I can't count the obstinate nymphs that he brought over, 
By a strange kind of smile he put on when he thought of her. 
" My case is like Dido's," he sometimes remark'd, 
" When I last saw my love^ she was fairly embark'd ; 

(7) 



8 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

Let hunters from me take this saw when they need it, 

— You're not always sure of your game when you've tree^d it. 

Just conceive such a change taking place in one's mistress! 

What romance would be left ? — who can flatter or kiss trees ? 

And for mercy's sake, how could one keep up a dialogue 

With a dull wooden thing that will live and will die a log, — 

Not to say that the thought would forever intrude 

That you've less chance to win her the more she fs wood ? 

Ah ! it went to my heart, and the memory still grieves, 

To see those loved graces all taking their leaves ; 

Those charms beyond speech, so enchanting but now, 

As they left me forever, each making its bough ! 

If her tongue had a tang sometimes more than was right, 

Her new bark is worse than ten times her old bite." 

Now, Daphne, — before she was happily treeified, — 
Over all other flowers the lily had deified, 
And when she expected the god on a visit, 
('Twas before he had made his intentions explicit,) 
Some buds she arranged with a vast deal of care, 
To look as if artlessly twined in her hair, 
Where they seemed, as he said, when he paid his addresses, 
Like the day breaking through the long night of her tresses ; 
So, whenever he wished to be quite irresistible, 
Like a man with eight trumps in his hand at a whist-table, 
(I feared me at first that the rhyme was untwistable. 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

Though I might have lugged in an allusion to Cristabel,) — 

He would take up a lily, and gloomily look in it, 

As I shall at the , when they cut up my book in it. 

Well, here, after all the bad rhyme I've been spinning, 
I've got back at last to my story's beginning : 
Sitting there, as I say, in the shade of his mistress, 
As dull as a volume of old Chester mysteries, 
Or as those puzzling specimens, which, in old histories, 
We read of his verses — the Oracles, namely, — 
(I wonder the Greeks should have swallowed them tamely, 
For one might bet safely whatever he has to risk, 
They were laid at his door by some ancient Miss Asterisk, 
And so dull that the men who retailed them out-doors 
Got the ill name of ' augurs,' because they were bores,) — 
First, he mused what the animal substance or herb is 
Would induce a moustache, for you know he's imherhis ; 
Then he shuddered to think how his youthful position 
Was assailed by the age of his son the physician ; 
At some poems he glanced, had been sent to him lately, 
And the metre and sentiment puzzled him greatly; 
''Mehercle! I'd make such proceedings felonious, — 
Have they all of them slept in the cave of Trophonius ? 
Look well to your seat, 'tis like taking an airing 
On a corduroy road, and that out of repairing ; 
It leads one, 'tis true, through the primitive forest, 



10 . A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

Grand natural features — but, then, one .has no rest ; 

You just catch a glimpse of some ravishing distance, 

When a jolt puts the whole of it out of existence, — 

Why not use their ears, if they happen to have any ?" 

— Here the laurel-leaves murmured the name of poor Daphne. 

"O, weep with me, Daphne," he sighed, " for you know it's 
A terrible thing to be pestered with poets! 
But, alas, she is dumb, and the proverb holds good, 
She never will cry till she's out of the wood ! 
What wouldn't I give if I never had known of her ? 
'Twere a kind of relief had I something to groan over ; 
If I had but some letters of hers, now, to toss over, 
I might turn for the nonce a Byronic philosopher, 
And bewitch all the flats by bemoaning the loss of her 
.One needs something tangible, though to begin on — 
A loom, as it were, for the fancy to spin on ; 
What boots all your grist ? it can never be ground 
Till a breeze makes the arms of the windmill go round 
(Or, if 'tis a water-mill, alter the metaphor. 
And say it won't stir, save the wheel be well wet afore, 
Or lug in some stuff about water '' so dreamily," — 
It is not a metaphor, though, 'tis a simile ;) 
A lily, perhaps, would set 7ny mill agoing, 
For just at this season, I think, they are blowing, 
Here, somebody, fetch one, not very far hence 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 11 

Tiiey're in bloom by the score, 'tis but climbing a fence ; 

There's a poet hard by, who does nothing but fill his 

Whole garden, from one end to t'other, with lilies ; 

A very good plan, were it not for satiety, 

One longs for a weed here and there, for variety ; 

Though a weed is no more than a flower in disguise, 

Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes. 

Now there happened to be among Phoebus's followers, 
A gentleman, one of the omnivorous swallowers 
Who bolt every book that comes out of the press. 
Without the least question of larger or less, 
Whose stomachs are strong at the expense of their head, — 
For reading new books is like eating new bread, 
One can bear it at first, but by gradual steps he 
Is brought to death's door of a mental dyspepsy. 
On a previous stage of existence, our Hero 
Had ridden outside, with the glass below zero ; 
He had been, 'tis a fact you may safely rely on, 
Of a very old stock a most eminent scion, — 
A stock all fresh quacks their fierce boluses ply on. 
Who stretch the new boots Earth's unwilling to try on. 
Whom humbugs of all shapes and sorts keep their eye on, 
Whose hair 's in the mortar of every new Zion, 
Who, when whistles are dear, go directly and buy one. 
Who think slavery a crime that we must not say fie on, 



12 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

Who hunt, if they e'er hunt at all, with the lion, 
(Though they hunt lions also, whenevei they spy one,) 
Who contrive to make every good fortune a wry one, 
And at last choose the hard bed of honor to die on. 
Whose pedigree traced to earth's earliest years. 
Is longer than any thing else but their ears ; — 
In short, he was sent into life with the wrong key. 
He unlocked the door, and stept forth a poor donkey. 
Though kicked and abused by his bipedal betters. 
Yet he filled no mean place in the kingdom of letters; 
Far happier than many a literary hack. 
He bore only paper-mill rags on his back ; 
(For it makes a vast difference which side the mill 
One expends on the paper his labor and skill ;) 
So, when his soul waited a new transmigration. 
And Destiny balanced 'twixt this and that station, 
Not having much time to expend upon bothers. 
Remembering he'd had some connexion with authors, 
And considering his four legs had grown paralytic, — 
She set him on two, and he came forth a critic. 

Through his babyhood no kind of pleasure he took 
In any amusement but tearing a book ; 
For him there was no intermediate stage. 
From babyhood up to straight-laced middle age ; 
There were years when he didn't \^"ear coat-tails behind- 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 13 

But a boy he could never be rigbtly defined ; 

Like the Irish Good Folk, though in length scarce a span, 

From the womb he came gravely, a little old man ; 

While other boys' trovvsers demfwided the toil 

Of the motherly fingers on all kinds of soil, 

Red, yellow, brown, black, clayey, gravelly, loamy, 

He sat in a corner and read Viri Romse. 

He never was known to unbend or to revel once 

In base, marbles, hockey, or kick up the devil once ; 

He was just one of those who excite the benevolence 

Of old prigs who sound the soul's depths with a ledger, 

And are on the look out-for some young men to " edger- 

-cate," as they call it, who won't be too costly, 

And who'll afterward take to the ministry mostly ; 

Who always wear spectacles, always look bilious, 

Always keep on good terms with each mater -familias 

Throughout the whole parish, and manage to rear 

Ten boys like themselves, on four hundred a year; 

Who, fulfilling in turn the same fearful conditions, 

Fiither preach through their noses, or go upon missions. 

In this way our hero got safely to College, 
Where he bolted alike both his commons and knowledge; 
A reading-machine, always wound up and going. 
He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing, 
Appeared in a gown, and a vest of black satin. 



1 1 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

To spout such a Gothic oration in Latin, 
That Tully could never have made out a word in it, 
(Though himself was the model the author preferred in it,) 
And grasping the parchment ^uhich gave him in fee. 
All the mystic and so-forths contained in A. B., 
He was launched (life is always compared to a sea,) 
With just enough learning, and skill for the using it, 
To prove he'd a brain, by forever confusing it. 
So worthy Saint Benedict, piously burning 
With the holiest zeal against secular learning, 
Nesciensque scienter, as writers express it, 
Indoctusque sapienter a Eomd recessit. 

'Twould be endless to tell you the things that he knew, 
All separate facts, undeniably true. 
But with him or each other they'd nothing to do; 
No power of combining, arranging, discerning. 
Digested the masses he learned into learning ; 
There was one thing in life he had practical knowledge for, 
(And this, you will think, he need scarce go to college for,) 
Not a deed would he do, nor a word would he utter. 
Till he'd weighed its relations to plain bread and butter. 
When he left Alma Mater, he practised his wits 
In compiling the journals' historical bits, — 
Of shops broken open, men falling in fits. 
Great fortunes in England bequeathed to poor printer?, 



A FABLE FUR THE CRITICS. lO 

And cold spells, the coldest for many past winters, — 

Then, rising by industry, knack, and address, 

Got notices up for an unbiassed press, 

With a mind so well poised, it seemed equally made for 

Applause or abuse, just which chanced to be paid for ; 

From this point his progress was rapid and sure, 

To the post of a regular heavy reviewer. 

And here I must say, he wrote excellent articles 
On the Hebraic points, or the force of Greek particles, 
They filled up the space nothing else was prepared for, 
And nobody read that which nobody cared for ; 
If any old book reached a fiftieth edition, 
He could fill forty pages with safe erudition ; 
He could gauge the old books by the old set of rules. 
And his very old nothings pleased very old fools ; 
But give him a new book, fresh out of the heart, 
And you put him at sea without compass or chart, — 
His blunders aspired to the rank of an art ; 
For his lore was engraft, something foreign that grew in him, 
Exhausting the sap of the native and true in him. 
So that when a man came with a soul that was new in him, 
Carving new forms of truth out of Nature's old granite, 
New and old at their birth, like Le Verrier's planet. 
Which, to get a true judgment, themselves must create 
In the soul of their critic the measure and weight, 



IG A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

Being rather themselves a fresh standard of grace, 
To compute their own judge, and assign him his place, 
Our reviewer would crawl all about it and round it, 
And, reporting each circumstance just as he found it, 
Without the least malice, — his record would be 
Profoundly aesthetic as that of a flea. 

Which, supping on Wordsworth, should print, for our sakes. 
Recollections of nights with the Bard of the Lakes, 
Or, borne by an Arab guide, ventured to render a 
General view of the ruins at Denderah. 

As I said, he was never precisely unkind. 
The defect in his brain was mere absence of mind ; 
If he boasted, 'twas simply that he was self made, 
A position which I, for one, never gainsaid, 
My respect for my Maker supposing a skill 
In his works which our hero would answer but ill ; 
And I trust that the mould which he used may be cracked, or he, 
Made bold by success, may make broad his phylactery, 
And set up a kind of a man- manufactory, 
An event which I shudder to think about, seeing 
That Man is a moral, accountable being. 

He meant well enough, but was still in the way, 
As a dunce always is, let him be where he may ; 
Indeed, they appear to come into existence 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 17 

To impede other folks with their awkward assistance ; 

If you set up a dunce on the very North pole, 

All alone with himself, I believe, on my soul, 

He'd manage to get betwixt somebody's shins, 

And pitch him down bodily, all in his sins. 

To the grave polar bears sitting round on the ice, 

All shortening their grace, to be in for a slice ; 

Or, if he found nobody else there to pother. 

Why, one of his legs would just trip up the other, 

For there's nothing we read of in torture's inventions. 

Like a well-meaning dunce, with the best of intentions. 

A terrible fellow to meet in society, 

Not the toast that he buttered was ever so dry at tea ; 

There he'd sit at the table and stir in his sugar. 

Crouching close for a spring, all the while, like a cougar; 

Be sure of your facts, of your measures and weights. 

Of your time — he's as fond as an Arab of dates ; — 

You'll be telling, perhaps, in your comical way, 

Of something you've seen in the course of the day ; 

And, just as you're tapering out the conclusion, 

You venture an ill-fated classic allusion, — 

The girls have all got their laughs ready, when, whack ! 

The cougar comes down on your thunderstruck back ; 

You had left out a comma, — your Greek's put in joint, 

And pointed at cost of your story's whole point. 
2 



18 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

In the course of the evening, you venture on certain 

Soft speeches to Anne, in the shade of the curtain ; 

You tell her your heart can be likened to one flower, 

" And that, oh most charming of women, 's the sunflower, 

Which turns" — here a clear nasal voice, to your terror, 

From outside the curtain, says " that's all an error." 

As for him, he's — no matter, he never grew tender, 

Sitting after a ball, with his feet on the fender, 

Shaping somebody's sweet features out of cigar smoke, 

(Though he'd willingly grant you that such doings are smoke jj 

All women he damns with muf.ablle semper^ 

And if ever he felt something like love's distemper, 

'Twas toward a young lady who spoke ancient Mexican, 

And assisted her father in making a lexicon ; 

Though I recollect hearing him get quite ferocious 

About one Mary Clausum, the mistress of Grotius, 

Or something of that sort, — but, no more to bore ye 

With character-painting, I'll turn to my story. 

Now, Apollo, who finds it convenient sometimes 
To get his court clear of the makers of rhymes, 
The genus, I think it is called, irritabiley 
Every one of whom thinks himself treated most shabbily, 
And nurses a — what is it ? — immedicahile, 
Which keeps him at boiling-point, hot for a quarrel, 
As bitter as wormwood, and sourer than sorrel, 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 19 

If any poor devil but looks at a laurel ; — 

Apollo, I say, being sick of their rioting, 

(Though he sometimes acknowledged their verse had a quieting 

Effect after dinner, and seemed to suggest a 

Retreat to the shrine of a tranquil siesta,) 

Kept our Hero at hand, who, by means of a bray, 

Which he gave to the life, drove the rabble away ; 

And if that wouldn't do, he was sure to succeed, 

If he took his review out and offered to read ; 

Or, failing in plans of this milder description, 

He would ask for their aid to get up a subscription, 

Considering that authorship wasn't a rich craft. 

To print the " American drama of Witchcraft." 

"Stay, I'll read you a scene," — but he hardly began, 

Ere Apollo shrieked " Help !" and the authors all ran : 

And once, when these purgatives acted with less spirit, 

And the desperate case asked a remedy desperate. 

He drew from his pocket a foolscap epistle, 

As calmly as if 'twere a nine-barrelled pistol. 

And threatened them all with the judgment to come, 

Of " A wandering Star's first impressions of Rome." 

"Stop! stop!" with their hands o'er their ears screamed tiie 

Muses, 
" He may go off and murder himself, if he chooses, 
'Twas a means self-defence only sanctioned his trying, 
*Tis mere massacre now that the enemy's flying ; 



20 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

If he's forced to 't again, and we happen to be there, 

Give us each a large handkerchief soaked in strong ether." 

I called this a " Fable for Critics;" you think it's 
More like a display of my rhythmical trinkets ; 
My plot, like an icicle, 's slender and slippery, 
Every moment more slender, and likely to slip awry, 
And the reader unwilling in loco desipere, 
Is free to jump over as much of my frippery 
As he fancies, and, if he's a provident skipper, he^ 
May have an Odyssean sway of the gales, 
And get safe into port, ere his patience all fails; 
Moreover, although 'tis a slender return 
For your toil and expense, yet my paper will burn. 
And, if you have manfully struggled thus far with me. 
You may e'en twist me up, and just light your cigar with me 
If too angry for that, you can tear me in pieces. 
And my membra disjecta consign to the breezes, 
A fate like great Ratzau's, whom one of those bores, 
Who beflead with bad verses poor Louis Quatorze, 
Describes, (the first verse somehow ends with vicloire,) 
As dispersant par tout et ses membres et sa gloire ; 
Or, if I were over-desirous of earning 
A repute among noodles for classical learning, 
I could pick you a score of allusions, I wis, 
As new as the jests of Didaskalos tis ; 



m 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 21 

Better still, I could make out a good solid list 

From recondite authors who do not exist, — 

But that would be naughty : at least, I could twist 

Something out of Absyrtus, or turn your inquiries 

After Milton's prose metaphor, drawn from Osiris; — 

But, as Cicero says he won't say this or that, 

(A fetch, I must say, most transparent and flat,) 

After saying whate'er he could possibly think of, — 

I simply will state that I pause on the brink of 

A mire, ankle-deep, of deliberate confusion, 

Made up of old jumbles of classic allusion, 

So, when you were thinking yourselves to be pitied, 

Just conceive how much harder your teeth you'd have gritted, 

An 'twere not for the dulness I've kindly omitted. 

rd apologize here for my many digressions, 
Were it not that I'm certain to trip into fresh ones, 
('Tis so hard to escape if you get in their mesh once ;) 
Just reflect, if you please, how 'tis said by Horatius, 
That Mseonides nods now and then, and, my gracious ! 
It certainly does look a little bit ominous 
When he gets under way with ion d'apameibomenos. 
(Here a something occurs which I'll just clap a rhyme to, 
And say it myself, ere a Zoilus has time to, — 
Any author a nap like Van' Winkle's may take, 
If he only contrive to keep readers awake, 



22 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

But he'll very soon find himself laid on the shelf, 
If they fall a nodding when he nods himself.) 

Once for all, to return, and to stay, will I, nill I — 
When Phoebus expressed his desire for a lily. 
Our hero, whose homoeopathic sagacity 
With an ocean of zeal mixed his drop of capacity, 
Set off for the garden as fast as the wind, 
(Or, to take a comparison more to my mind, 
As a sound politician leaves conscience behind,) 
And leaped the low fence, as a party hack jumps 
O'er his principles, when something else turns up trumps. 

He was gone a long time, and Apollo meanwhile, 
Went over some sonnets of his with a file, 
For of all compositions, he thought that the sonnet 
Best repaid all the toil you expended upon it ; 
It should reach with one impulse the end of its course, 
And for one final blow collect all of its force ; 
Not a verse should be salient, but each one should tend 
With a wave-like up-gathering to burst at the end ; — 
So, condensing the strength here, there smoothing a wry kink, 

He was killing the time, when up walked Mr. ; 

At a few steps behind him, a small man in glasses. 
Went dodging about, muttering " murderers ! asses !'* 
From out of his pocket a paper he'd take, 



.i FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

With the proud look of martyrdom tied to its staKe, 

And, reading a squib at himself, he'd say, " Here I see 

'Gainst American letters a bloody conspiracy, 

They are all by my personal enemies written ; 

I must post an anonymous letter to Britain, 

And show that this gall is the merest suggestion 

Of spite at my zeal on the Copyright question, 

For, on this side the water, 'tis prudent to pull 

O'er the eyes of the public their national wool, 

By accusing of slavish respect to John Bull, 

All American authors who have more or less 

Of that anti-American humbug — success. 

While in private we're always embracing ihe knees 

Of some twopenny editor over the seas, 

And licking his critical shoes, for you know 'tis 

The whole aim of our lives to get one English 'notice' ;, 

My American puffs I would willingly burn all, 

(They're all from one source, monthly, weekly, diurnalj 

To get but a kick from a transmarine journal !" 

So, culling the gibes of each critical scorner 
As if they were plums, and himself were Jack Horner, 
He came cautiously on, peeping round every corner, 
And into each hole where a weasel might pass in, 
Expecting the knife of some critic assassin, 
Who stabs to the heart with a caricature, 



j4 a fable for the critics. 

Not so bad as those daubs of the Sun, to be sure 
Yet done with a dagger-o-type, whose vile portraits 
Disperse all one's good, and condense all one's poor traits. 

Apollo looked up, hearing footsteps approaching, 
And slipped out of sight the new rhymes he was broaching,— 

" Good day, Mr. , I'm happy to meet 

With a scholar so ripe, and a critic so neat, 
Who through Grub-street the soul of a gentleman carries, — 
What news from that suburb of London and Paris 
Which latterly makes such shrill claims to monopolize 
The credit of being the New World's metropolis ?" 

"Why, nothing of consequence, save this attack 
On my friend there, behind, by some'piliful hack, 
Who thinks every national author a poor one. 
That isn't a copy of something that's foreign, 
And assaults the American Dick — " 

" Nay, 'tis clear 
That your Damon there 's fond of a flea in his ear, 
And, if no one else furnished them gratis, on tick 
He would buy some himself, just to hear the old click ; 
Why, I honestly think, if some fool in Japan 
Should turn up his nose at the ' Poems on Man,' 
Your friend there by some inward instinct would know it, 
Would get it translated, reprinted, and show it ; 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 25 

1 

As a man might take off a high stock to exhibit 
The autograph round his own neck of the gibbet ; 
Nor would let it rest so, but fire column after column, 
Signed Cato, or Brutus, or something as solemn, 
By way of displaying his critical crosses. 
And tweaking that poor transatlantic proboscis. 
His broadsides resulting (and this there's no doubt of,) 
In successively sinking the craft they're fired out of. 
Now nobody knows when an author is hit, 
If he don't have a public hysterical fit ; 
Let him only keep close in his snug garret's dim ether, 
And nobody'd think of his critics — or him either ; 
If an author have any least fibre of worth in him, 
Abuse would but tickle the organ of mirth in him, 
AH the critics on earth cannot crush with their ban. 
One word that's in lune with the nature of man." 

" Well, perhaps so ; meanwhile I have brought you a book 
Into which if you'll just have the goodness to look. 
You may feel so delighted, when you have got through it. 
As to think it not unworth your while to review it, 
And I think I can promise your thoughts, if you do, 
A place in the next Democratic Review." 

" The most thankless of gods you must surely have tho't me, 
For this is the forty-fourth copy you've brought me. 



26 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

I have given them away, or at least I have tried, 

But I've forty-two left, standing all side by side, 

(The man who accepted that one copy, died,) — 

From one end of a shelf to the other they reach, 

* With the author's respects' neatly written in each. 

The publisher, sure, will proclaim a Te Deum, 

When he hears of that order the British Museum 

Has sent for one set of what books were first printed 

In America, little or big, — for 'tis hinted 

That this is the first truly tangible hope he 

Has ever had raised for the sale of a copy. 

I've thought very often 'twould be a good tiling 

In all public collections of books, if a wing 

Were set off by itself, like the seas from the dry lands, 

Marked Literature suited to desolate islands, 

And filled with such books as could never be read 

Save by readers of proofs, forced to do it for bread, — 

Such books as one's wrecked on in small country-taverns, 

Such as hermits might mortify over in caverns, 

Such as Satan, if printing had then been invented, 

As the climax of woe, would to Job have presented, 

Such as Crusoe might dip in, although there are iew so 

Outrageously cornered by fate as poor Crusoe ; 

And since the philanthropists just now are banging 

And gibbeting all who're in favor of hanging, — 

(Though Cheever has proved that the Bible and Altar 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 27 

Were let down from Heaven at the end of a halter, 

And that vital religion would dull and grow callous, 

Unrefreshed, now and then, with a sniflf of the gallows,) — 

And folks are beginning to think it looks odd. 

To choke a poor scamp for the glory of God ; 

And that He who esteems the Virginia reel 

A bait to draw saints from their spiritual weal, 

And regards the quadrille as a far greater knavery 

Than crushing His African children with slavery, — 

Since all who take part in a waltz or cotillion 

Are mounted for hell on the Devil's own pillion. 

Who, as every true orthodox Christian well J^nows, 

Approaches the heart through the door of the toes, — 

That He, I was saying, whose judgments are stored 

For such as take steps in despite of his word. 

Should look with delight on the agonized prancing 

Of a wretch who has not the least ground for his dancing, 

While the State, standing by, sings a verse from the Psalter 

About offering to God on his favorite halter. 

And, when the legs droop from their twitching divergence, 

Sells the clothes to a Jew, and the corpse to the surgeons ; — 

Now, instead of all this, I think I can direct you all 
To a criminal code both humane and effectual ; — 
I propose to shut up every doer of wrong 
With these desperate books, for such term, short or long, 



28 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

As by statute in such cases made and provided, 

Shall be by your wise legislators decided 

Thus : — Let murderers be shut, to grow wiser and cooler, 

At hard labor for life on the works of Miss ; 

Petty thieves, kept from flagranter crimes by their fears, 
Shall peruse Yankee Doodle a blank term of years, — 
That American Punch, like the English, no doubt — 
Just the sugar and lemons and spirit left out. 

" But stay, here comes Tityrus Griswold, and leads on 
The flocks whom he first plucks alive, and then feeds on,— 
A loud cackling swarm, in whose feathers warm-drest, 
He goes for as perfect a — swan, as the rest. 

" There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one, 
Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on, 
Whose prose is grand verse, while his verse, the Lord knows, 

Is some of it pr No, 'tis not even prose j 

I'm speaking of metres ; some poems have welled 

From those rare depths of soul that have ne'er been excelled j 

They're not epics, but that doesn't matter a pin, 

In creating, the only hard thing's to begin ; 

A grass-blade 's no easier to make than an oak, 

If you've once found the way, you've achieved the grand stroke; 

In the worst of his poems are mines of rich matter, 

But thrown in a heap with a crush and a clatter; 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 29 

Now it is not one thing nor another alone 
Makes a poem, but rather the general tone, 
The something pervading, uniting the whole, 
The before unconceived, unconceivable soul. 
So that just in removing this trifle or that, you 
Take away, as it were, a chief limb of the statue ; 
Roots, wood, bark, and leaves, singly perfect may be. 
But, clapt hodge-podge together, they don't make a tree. 

"But, to come back to Emerson, (whom by the way, 
I believe we left waiting,) — his is, we may say, 
A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, whose range 
Has Olympus for one pole, for t'other the Exchange ; 
He seems, to my thinking, (although I'm afraid 
The comparison must, long ere this, have been made,) 
A Plotinus-Montaigne, where the Egyptian's gold mist 
And Ihe Gascon's shrewd wit cheek-by-jowl co-exist; 
All admire, and yet scarcely six converts he's got 
To 1 don't (nor they either) exactly know what; 
For though he builds glorious temples, 'tis odd 
He leaves never a doorway to get in a god. 
'Tis refreshing to old-fashioned people like me. 
To meet such a primitive Pagan as he, 
In whose mind all creation is duly respected 
As parts of himself — ^just a little projected ; 
And who's willing to worship the stars and the sun. 



30 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

A convert to — nothing but Emerson. 

So perfect a balance there is in his head, 

That he talks of things sometimes as if they were dead ; 

Life, nature, love, God, and affairs of that sort, 

He looks at as merely ideas ; in short, 

As if they were fossils stuck round in a cabinet, 

Of such vast extent that our earth's a mere dab in it ; 

Composed just as he is inclined to conjecture her. 

Namely, one part pure earth, ninety-nine parts pure lecturer; 

You are filled with delight at his clear demonstration, 

Each figure, word, gesture, just fits the occasion, 

With the quiet precision of science he'll sort 'em, 

But you can't help suspecting the whole a post mortem. 

" There are persons, mole-blind to the soul's make and style, 
Who insist on a likeness 'twixt him and Carlyle ; 
To compare him with Plato would be vastly fairer, 
Carlyle's the more burly, but E. is the rarer; - 
He sees fewer objects, but clearlier, truelier, 
If C.'s as original, E.'s more peculiar; 
That he's more of a man you might say of the one, 
Of the other he's more of an Emerson ; 
C.'s the Titan, as shaggy of mind as of limb, — 
E. the clear-eyed Olympian, rapid and slim ; 
The one's two-thirds Norseman, the other half Greek, 
Where the one 's most abounding, the other 's to seek ; 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 31 

C.'s generals require to be seen in the mass, — 

E.'s specialties gain if enlarged by the glass; 

C. gives nature and God his own fits of the blues, 

And rims common-sense things with mystical hues, — 

E. sits in a mystery calm and intense, 

And looks coolly around him with sharp common-sense ; 

C. shows you how every-day matters unite 

With the dim transdiurnal recesses of night, — 

While E., in a plain, preternatural way, 

Makes mysteries matters of mere every day ; 

C. draws all his characters quite a la Fuseli, — 

He don't sketch their bundles of muscles and thews illy. 

But he paints with a brush so untamed and profuse, 

They seem nothing but bundles of muscles and thews ; 

E. is rather like Flaxman, lines strait and severe, 

And a colorless outline, but full, round, and clear ; — 

To the men he thinks worthy he frankly accords 

The design of a white marble statue in words. 

C. labors to get at the centre, and then 

Take a reckoning from there of his actions and men ; 

E. calmly assumes the said centre as granted, 

And, given himself, has whatever is wanted. 

" He has imitators in scores, who omit 
No part of the man but his wisdom and wit,— 
Who go carefully o'er the sky-blue of his brain, 



32 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

And when he has skimmed it once, skim it again ; 
If at all they resemble him, you may be sure it is 
Because their shoals mirror his mists and obscurities, 
As a mud-puddle seems deep as heaven for a minute, 
While a cloud that floats o'er is reflected within it. 

" There comes , for instance ; to see him 's rare sport, 

Tread in Emerson's tracks with legs painfully short ; 

How he jumps, how he strains, and gets red in the face. 

To keep step with the mystagogue's natural pace ! 

He follows as close as a stick to a rocket. 

His fmgers exploring the prophet's each pocket. 

Fie, for shame, brother bard ; with good fruit of your own, 

Can't you let neighbor Emerson's orchards alone ? 

Besides, 'tis no use, you'll not find e'en a core, — 

has picked up all the windfalls before. 

They might strip every tree, and E. never would catch 'em, 
His Hesperides have no rude dragon to watch 'em ; 
When they send him a dishfull, and ask him to try 'em, 
He never suspects how the sly rogues came by 'em ; 
He wonders why 'tis there are none such his trees on. 
And thinks 'em the best he has tasted this season. 

" Yonder, calm as a cloud, Alcott stalks in a dream, 
And fancies himself in thy groves. Academe, 
With the Parthenon nigh, and the olive-trees o'er him, 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. o3 

And never a fact to perplex him or bore him, 

With a snug room at Plato's, when night comes, to walk to. 

And people from morning till midnight to talk to, 

And from midnight till morning, nor snore in their listening ;— 

So he muses, his face with the joy of it glistening. 

For his highest conceit of a happiest state is 

Where they'd live upon acorns, and hear him talk gratis ; 

And indeed, I believe, no man ever talked better — 

Each sentence hangs perfectly poised to a letter ; 

He seems piling words, but there's royal dust hid 

In the heart of each sky-piercing pyramid. 

While he talks he is great, but goes out like a taper. 

If you shut him up closely with pen, ink, and paper ; 

Yet his fingers itch for 'em from morning till night. 

And he thinks he does wrong if he don't always write ; 

In this, as in all things, a lamb among men. 

He goes to sure death when he goes to his pen. 

" Close behind him is Brownson, his mouth very fiill 
With attempting to gulp a Gregorian bull ; 
Who contrives, spite of that, to pour out as he goes 
A stream of transparent and forcible prose ; 
He shifrs quite about, then proceeds to expound 
That 'tis merely the earth, not himself, that turns round, 
And wishes it clearly impressed on your mind, 
That the weather-cock rules and not follows the wind ; 



34 £l fable for the CRITinS. 

Proving first, then as deftly confuting each side, 

With no doctrine pleased that's not somewhere denied. 

He lays the denier away on the shelf. 

And then — down beside him lies gravely himself. 

He's the Salt River boatman, who always stands willmg 

To convey friend or foe without charging a shilling, 

And so fond of the trip that, when leisure's to spare, 

He'll row himself up, if he can't get a fare. 

The worst of it is, that his logic 's so strong, 

That of two sides he commonly chooses the wrong ; 

If there is only one, why, he'll split it in two, 

And first pummel this half, then that, black and blue. 

That white's white needs no proof, but it takes a deep fellow 

To prove it jet-black, and that jet-black is yellow. 

He offers the true faith to drink in a sieve, — 

When it reaches your lips there's naught left to believe 

But a few silly- (syllo-, I mean,) -gisms that squat 'em 

Like tadpoles, o'erjoyed with the mud at the bottom. 

" There is Willis, so naiiy and jaunty and gay, 
Who says his best things in so foppish a way, 
With conceits and pet phrases so thickly o'erlaying 'em, 
That one hardly knows whether to thank him for saying 'em ; 
Over-ornament ruins both poem and prose, 
Just conceive of a muse with a ring in her nose ! 
His prose had a natural grace of its own, 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. Sf) 

And enough of it, too, if he'd let it alone ; 

But he twitches and jerks so, one fairly gets tired, 

And is forced to forgive where he might have admired ; 

Yet whenever it slips away free and unlaced, 

It runs like a stream with a musical waste. 

And gurgles along with the liquidest sweep ; — 

'Tis not deep as a river, but who'd have it deep ? 

In a country where scarcely a village is found 

That has not its author sublime and profound, 

For some one to be slightly shoal is a duty. 

And Willis's shallowness makes half his beauty. 

His prose winds along with a blithe, gurgling error, 

And reflects all of Heaven it can see in its mirror. 

'Tis a narrowish strip, but it is not an artifice, — 

'Tis the true out-of-doors with its genuine hearty phiz ; 

It is Nature herself, and there's something in that. 

Since most brains reflect but the crown of a hat. 

No volume I know to read under a tree, 

More truly delicious than his A 1' Abri, 

With the shadows of leaves flowing over your book, 

Like ripple-shades netting the bed of a brook ; 

With June coming sofily your shoulder to look over. 

Breezes waiting to turn every leaf of your book over, 

And Nature to criticise still as you read, — 

The page that bears that is a rare one indeed. 



36 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

" He's SO innate a cockney, that had he been born 
Where plain bare-skin's the only full-dress that is worn, 
He'd have given his own such an air that you'd say 
'T had been made by a tailor to lounge in Broadway. 
His nature's a glass of champagne with the foam on't, 
As tender as Fletcher, as witty as Beaumont ; 
So his best things are done in the flush of the moment, 
If he wait, all is spoiled ; he may stir it and shake it. 
But, the fixed air once gone, he can never re-make It. 
He might be a marvel of easy delightfulness. 
If he would not sometimes leave the r out of sp right fulness ; 
And he ought to let Scripture alone — 'tis self-slaughter, 
For nobody likes inspiration-and-water. 
He'd have been just the fellow to sup at the Mermaid, 
Cracking jokes at rare Ben, with an eye to the bar-maid, 
His wit running up as Canary ran down, — 
The topmost bright bubble on the wave of The Town. 

" Here comes Parker, the Orson of parsons, a man 
Whom the Church undertook to put under her ban, — 
(The Church of Socinus, I mean) — his opinions 
Being So- (ultra) -cinian, they shocked the Socinians ; 
They believed — faith I'm puzzled — I think I may call 
Their belief a believing in nothing at all, 
Or something of that sort ; I know they all went 
For a general union of total dissent : 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 37 

He went a step farther ; without cough or hem, 

He frankly avowed he believed not in them ; 

And, before he could be jumbled up or prevented, 

From their orthodox kind of dissent he dissented. 

There was heresy here, you perceive, for the right 

Of privately judging means simply that light 

Has been granted to me, for deciding on you, 

And, in happier times, before Atheism grew, 

The deed contained clauses for cooking you, too. 

Now at Xerxes and Knut we all laugh, yet our foot 

With the same wave is wet that mocked Xerxes and Knut ; 

And we all entertain a sincere private notion. 

That our Thus far ! will have a great weight with the ocean; 

'Twas so with our liberal Christians : they bore 

With sincerest conviction their chairs to the shore ; 

They brandished their worn theological birches, 

Bade natural progress keep out of the Churches, 

And expected the lines they had drawn to prevail 

With the fast-rising tide to keep out of their pale \ 

They had formerly dammed the Pontifical See, 

And the same thing, they thought, would do nicely for P. ; 

But he turned up his nose at their murmuring and shamming, 

And cared (shall I say ?) not a d — for their damming ; 

So they first read him out of their Church, and next minute 

Turned round and declared he had never been in it. 

But tlie ban was too small or the man was too big, 



39 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

For he recks not their bells, books, and candles a fig ; 

(He don't look like a man who would stay treated shabbily, 

Sophroniscus' son's head o'er the features of Rabelais ;) — 

He bangs and bethwacks them, — their backs he salutes 

With the whole tree of knowledge torn up by the roots ; 

His sermons with satire are plenteously verjuiced, 

And he talks in one breath of Confutzee, Cass, Zerduscht, 

Jack Robinson, Peter the Hermit, Strap, Dathan, 

Cush, Pitt (not the bottomless, that he's no faith in,) 

Pan, Pillicock, Shakspeare, Paul, Toots, Monsieur Tonson, 

Aldebaran, Alcander, Ben Khorat, Ben Jonson, 

Thoth, Richter, Joe Smith, Father Paul, Judah Monis, 

Musseus, Muretus, hem, — /i Scorpionis, 

Maccabee, Maccaboy, Mac — Mac — ah ! Machiavelli, 

Condorcet, Count d'Orsay, Conder, Say, Ganganelli, 

Orion, O'Connell, the Chevalier D'O, 

(Whom the great Sully speaks of,) to nav, the great toe 

Of the statue of Jupiter, now made to pass 

For that of Jew Peter by good Romish brass, — 

(You may add for yourselves, for I find it a bore, 

All the names you have ever, or not, heard before, 

And when you've done that — vvhy, invent a few more.) 

His hearers can't tell you on Sunday beforehand. 

If in that day's discourse they'll be Bibled or Koraned, 

For he's seized the idea (by his martyrdom fired,) 

That all men (not orthodox) may he inspired ; 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 39 

Yet, though wisdom profane with his creed he may weave in, 

He makes it quite clear what he doesiiH believe in, 

While some, who decry him, think all Kingdom Come 

Is a sort of a, kind of a, species of Hum, 

Of which, as it were, so to speak, not a crumb 

Would be left, if we did'nt keep carefully mum. 

And, to make a clean breast, that 'tis perfectly plain 

That all kinds of wisdom are somewhat profane ; 

Now P.'s creed than this may be lighter or darker, 

But in one thing, 'tis clear, he has faith, namely — Parker ; 

And this is what makes him the crowd-drawing preacher. 

There's a back-ground of god to each hard-working feature, 

Every word that he speaks has been fierily furnaced 

In the blast of a life that has struggled in earnest : 

There he stands, looking more like a ploughman than priest, 

If not dreadfully awkward, not graceful at least. 

His gestures all downright and same, if you will, 

As of brown-fisied Hobnail in hoeing a drill, 

But his periods fall on you, stroke after stroke, 

Like the blows of a lumberer felling an oak, 

You forget the man wholly, you're thankful to meet 

With a preacher who smacks of the field and the street, 

And to hear, you're not over-particular whence. 

Almost Taylor's profusion, quite Latimer's sense. 

" There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified, 



40 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is ignified, 

Save when by reflection 'tis kindled o' nights 

With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights. 

He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard of your nation, 

(There's no doubt that he stands in supreme ice-olation,) 

Your topmost Parnassus he may set his heel on, 

But no warm applauses come, peal following peal on, — 

He's too smooth and too polished to hang any zeal on : 

Unqualified merits, I'll grant, if you choose, he has 'em, 

But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm; 

If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul. 

Like being stirred up with the very North Pole. 

" He is very nice reading in summer, but inter 
Nos, we don't want extra freezing in winter ; 
Take him up in the depth of July, my advice is, 
When you feel an Egyptian devotion to ices. 
But, deduct all you can, there's enough that's right good in him, 
He has a true soul for field, river, and wood in him ; 
And his heart, in the midst of brick walls, or where'er it is. 
Glows, softens, and thrills with the tenderest charities, — 
To you mortals that delve in this trade-ridden planet ? 
No, to old Berkshire's hills, with their limestone and granite. 
If you'r one who in loco (add foco here) desipiSj 
You will get of his outermost heart (as I guess) a piece ; 
But you'd get deeper down if you came as a precipice. 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 41 

And would break the last seal of its inwardest fountain, 

If you only could palm yourself off for a mountain. 

Mr. Quivis, or somebody quite as discerning, 

Some scholar who's hourly expecting his learning, 

Calls B. the American Wordsworth ; but Wordsworth 

Is worth near as much as your whole tuneful herd's worth. 

No, don't be absurd, he's an excellent Bryant ; • 

But, my friends, you'll endanger the life of your client, 

By attempting to stretch him up into a giant : 

If you choose to compare him, I think there are two per- 

-sons fit for a parallel — Thomson and Cowper;* 

I don't mean exactly, — there's something of each. 

There's T.'s love of nature, C.'s penchant to preach; . 

Just mix up their minds so that C.'s spice of craziness 

Shall balance and neutralize T.'s turn for laziness. 

And it gives you a brain cool, quite frictionless, quiet, 

Whose internal police nips the buds of all riot, — 

A brain like a permanent strait-jacket put on 

The heart which strives vainly to burst off a button,—^ 

A brain which, without being slow or mechanic. 

Does more than a larger less drilled, more volcanic; 

He's a Cowper condensed, with no craziness bitten. 

And the advantage that Wordsworth before him has written. 

* To df.'monstrale quickly and easily how per- 
-veisely absurd 'lis to sound this name Cowper, 
As people in general call him named super, 
I just add that he rhymes it himself with horse-trooper. 



42 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

" But, my dear little bardlings, don't prick up your ears, 
Nor suppose I would rank you and Bryant as peers j 
If I call him an iceberg, I don't mean to say 
There is nothing in that which is grand, in its way ; . 
He is almost the one of your poets that knows 
How much grace, strength, and dignity lie in Repose ; 
If he sometimes fall short, he is too wise to mar 
His thought's modest fulness by going too far ; 
'Twould be well if your authors should all make a trial 
Of what virtue there is in severe self-denial, 
And measure their writings by Hesiod's staff, 
Which teaches that all has less value than half. 

" There is Whittier, whose swelling and vehement heart 
Strains the strait- breasted drab of the Quaker apart. 
And reveals the live Man, still supreme and erect 
Underneath the bemummying wrappers of sect; 
There was ne'er a man born who had more of the swino" 

o 

Of the true lyric bard and all that kind of thing ; 

And his failures arise, (though perhaps he don't know it,) 

From the very same cause that has made him a poet, — 

A fervor of mind which knows no separation 

'Twixt simple excitement and pure inspiration. 

As my Pythoness erst sometimes erred from not knowing 

If 'twere I or mere wind through her tripod was blowing ; 

Let his mind once get head in its favorite direction 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 43 

\.nd the torrent of verse bursts the dams of reflection, 

vVhile, borne with the rush of the metre along, 

The poet may chance to go right or go wrong, 

Content with the whirl and delirium of song ; 

Then his grammar 's not always correct, nor his rhymes, 

A.nd he's prone to repeat his own lyrics sometimes, 

Not his best, though, for those are struck off at white-heats 

When the heart in his breast like a trip-hammer beats. 

And can ne'er be repeated again any more 

Than they could have been carefully plotted before : 

Like old what's-his-name there at the battle of Hastings, 

(Who, however, gave more than mere rhythmical bastings,) 

Our Quaker leads off metaphorical fights 

For reform and whatever they call human rights, 

Botn singing and striking in front of the war 

And hitting his foes with the mallet of Thor ; 

Anne Jiaec, one exclaims, on beholding his knocks, 

Vesiis jilii tui, O, leather-clad Fox ? 

Can that be thy son, in the battle's mid din. 

Preaching brotherly love and then driving it in 

To the brain of the tough old Goliath of sin. 

With the smoothest of pebbles from Castaly's spring 

Impressed on his hard moral sense with a sling ? 

" All honor and praise to the right-hearted bard 
Who was true to The Voice when such service was hard. 



44 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

Who himsblf was so free he dared sing for the slave 

When to look but a protest in silence was brave ; 

All honor and praise to the women and men 

Who spoke out for the dumb and the drown-trodden then ! 

I need not to name them, already for each 

1 see History preparing the statue and niche ; 

They were harsh, but shall you be so shocked at hard words 

Who have beaten your pruning-hooks up into swords, 

Whose rewards and hurrahs men are surer to gain 

By the reaping of men and of women than grain ? 

Why should you stand aghast at their fierce wordy war, if 

You scalp one another for Bank or for Tariff? 

Your calling them cut-throats and knaves all day long 

Don't prove that the use of hard language is wrong ; 

W^hile the World's heart beats quicker to think of such mer. 

As signed Tyranny's doom with a bloody steel-pen, 

While on Fourth-of- Julys beardless orators fright one 

With hints at Harmodius and Aristogeiton, 

You need not look shy at your sisters and brothers 

Who stab with sharp words for the freedom of others; — 

No, a wreath, twine a wreath for the loyal and true 

Who, for sake of the many, dared stand with the ^ew, 

Not of blood-spattered laurel for enemies braved. 

But of broad, peaceful oak-leaves for citizens saved ! 

" Here comes Dana, abstractedly loitering along, 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 45 

Involved in a paulo-post-future of song, 

Who'll be going to write what'll never be written 

Till the Muse, ere he thinks of it, gives him the mitten, — 

Who is so well aware of how things should be done, 

That his own works displease him before they're begun, — 

Who so well all that makes up good poetry knows, 

That the best of his poems is written in prose ; 

All saddled and bridled stood Pegasus waiting. 

He was booted and spurred, but he loitered debating, 

In a very grave question his soul was immersed, — 

Which foot in the stirrup he ought to put first ; 

And, while this point and that he judicially dwelt on. 

He, somehow or other, had written Paul Felton, 

: Whose beauties or faults, whichsoever you see there, 

You'll allow only genius could hit upon either. 

That he once was the Idle Man none will deplore, 

But I fear he will never be any thing more ; 

The ocean of song heaves and glitters before him, 

The depth and the vastness and longing sweep o'er him, 

He knows every breaker and shoal on the chart. 

He has the Coast Pilot and so on by heart. 

Yet he spends his whole life, like the man in the fable, 

In learning to swim on his library-table. 

" There swaggers John Neal,-who has wasted in Maine 
The sinews and chords of his pugilist brain, 



46 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

Who might have been poet, but that, in its stead, he 

Preferred to believe that he was so already ; 

Too hasty to wait till Art's ripe fruit should drop, 

He must pelt down an unripe and colicky crop ; 

Who took to the law, and had this sterling plea for it, 

It required him to quarrel, and paid him a fee for it ; 

A man who's made less than he might have, because 

He always has thought himself more than he was, — 

Who, with very good natural gifts as a bard, 

Broke the strings of his lyre out by striking too hard, 

And cracked half the notes of a truly fine voice, 

Because song drew less instant attention than noise. 

Ah, men do not know how much strength is in poise. 

That he goes the farthest who goes far enough, 

And that all beyond that is just bother and stuff. 

No vain man matures, he makes too much new wood ; 

His blooms are too thick for the fruit to be good ; 

'Tis the modest man ripens, 'tis he that achieves, 

Just what's needed of sunshine and shade he receives ; 

Grapes, to mellow, require the cool dark of their leaves ; 

Neal wants balance ; he throws his mind always too far, 

And whisks out flocks of comets, but never a star ; 

He has so much muscle, and loves so to show it. 

That he strips himself naked to prove he's a poet, 

And, 10 show he could leap Art's wide ditch, if he tried. 

Jumps clean o'er it, and into the hedge t'other side. 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 47 

He has strength, but there's nothing about him in keeping ; 

One gets Surelier onward by walking than leaping ; 

He has used his own sinews himself to distress, 

And had done vastly more had he done vastly less ; 

In letters, too soon is as bad as too late, 

Could he only have waited he might have been great, 

But he plumped into Helicon up to the waist, 

And muddied the stream ere he took his first taste. 

" There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare 
That you hardly at first see the strength that is there ; 
A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet, 
So earnest, so graceful, so solid, so fleet. 
Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet ; 
'Tis as if a rough oak that for ages had stood. 
With his gnarled bony branches like ribs of the wood, 
Should bloom, after cycles of struggle and scathe. 
With a single anemone trembly and rathe ; 
His strength is so tender, his wildness so meek, 
That a suitable parallel sets one to seek, — 
He's a John Bunyan Fouque, a Puritan Tieck ; 
When Nature was shaping him, clay was not granted 
For making so full-sized a man as she wanted. 
So, to fill out her model, a little she spared 
From some finer-grained stuff for a woman prepared, 
And she could not have hit a more excellent plan 



48 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

For making him fully and perfectly man. 
The success of her scheme gave her so much delight, 
That she tried it again, shortly after, in Dwight ; 
Only, while she was kneading and shaping the clay, 
She sang to her work in her sweet childish way, 
\nd found, when she'd put the last touch to his soul. 
That the music had somehow got mixed with the whole, 

" Here's Cooper, who's written six volumes to show 
He's as good as a lord : well, let's grant that he's so ; 
If a person prefer that description of praise. 
Why, a coronet's certainly cheaper than bays ; 
But he need take no pains to convince us he's not 
(As his enemies say) the American Scott. 
Choose aay twelve men, and let C. read aloud 
That one of his novels of which he's most proud, 
And I'd lay any bet that, without ever quitting 
Their box, they'd be all, to a man, for acquitting. 
He has drawn you one character, though, that is new, 
One wildflower he's plucked that is wet with the dew 
Of this fresh Western world, and, the thing not to mince, 
He has done naught but copy it ill ever since ; 
His Indians, with proper respect be it said. 
Are just Natty Bumpo daubed over with red. 
And his very Long Toms are the same useful Nat, 
Rigged up in duck pants and a sou'-wester hat, 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 49 

(Though, once in a Coffin, a good chance was found 

To have slipt the old fellow away underground.) 

All his other men-figures are clothes upon sticks, 

The dernier chemise of a man in a fix, 

(As a captain besieged, when his garrison's small, 

Sets up caps upon poles to be seen o'er the wall ;) 

And the women he draws from one model don't vary, 

All sappy as maples and flat as a prairie. 

When a character's wanted, he goes to the task 

As a cooper would do in composing a cask ; 

He picks out the staves, of their qualities heedful. 

Just hoops them together as tight as is needful. 

And, if the best fortune should crown the attempt, he 

Has made at the most something wooden and empty. 

" Don't suppose I would underrate Cooper's abilities, 
If I thought you'd do that, I should feel very ill at ease ; 
The men who have given to one character life 
And objective existence, are not very rife, 
You may number them all, both prose-writers and singers, 
Without overrunning the bounds of your fingers, 
And Natty won't go to oblivion quicker 
Than Adams the parson or Primrose the vicar. 

" There is one thing in Cooper I like, too, and that is 

That on manners he lectures his countrymen gratis ; 
4 



50 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

Not precisely so either, because, for a rarity, 

He is paid for his tickets in unpopularity. 

Now he may overcharge his American pictures, 

But you'll grant there's a good deal of truth in his strictures j 

And I honor the man who is willing to sink 

Half his present repute for the freedom to think, 

And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, 

Will risk t'other half for the freedom to speak, 

Caring naught for what vengeance the mob has in store. 

Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or lower. 

" There are truths you Americans need to be told. 
And it never'U refute them to swagger and scold ; 
John Bull, looking o'er the Atlantic, in choler 
At your aptness for trade, says you worship the dollar; 
But to scorn such i-dollar-try's what very few do, 
And John goes to that church as often as you do. 
No matter what John says, don't try to outcrow him, 
'Tis enough to go quietly on and outgrow him ; 
Like most fathers, Bull hates to see Number One 
Displacing himself in the mind of his son, 
And detests the same faults in himself he'd nefjlected 
When he sees them again in his child's glass reflected ; 
To love one another you're too like by half, 
If he is a bull, you're a pretty stout calf, 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 51 

.^nd tear your own pasture for naught but to show 
What a nice pair of horns you're beginning to grow. 

" There are one or two things I should just like to hint, 
For you don't often get the truth told you in print ; 
The most of you (this is what strikes all beholders) 
Have a mental and physical stoop in the shoulders ; 
Though you ought to be free as the winds and the waves, 
You've the gait and the manners of runaway slaves ; 
Tho' you brag of your New World, you don't half believe in itj 
And as much of the Old as is possible weave in it ; 
Your goddess of freedom, a tight, buxom girl, 
With lips like a cherry and teeth like a pearl, 
With eyes bold as Here's, and hair floating free. 
And full of the sun as the spray of the sea. 
Who can sing at a husking or romp at a shearing. 
Who can trip through the forests alone without fearing, 
Who can drive home the covv^s with a song through the grass, 
Keeps glancing aside into Europe's cracked glass. 
Hides her red hands in gloves, pinches up her lithe waist. 
And makes herself wretched with transmarine taste ; 
She loses her fresh country charm when she takes 
Any mirror except her own rivers and lakes. 

" You steal Englishmen's books and think Englishmen's 
thought, 



52 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

With their salt on her tail your wild eagle is caught ; 

Your literature suits its each whisper and motion 

To what will be thought of it over the ocean ; 

The cast clothes of Europe your statesmanship tries 

And mumbles again the old blarneys and lies ; — 

Forget Europe wholly, your veins throb with blood 

To which the dull current in hers is but mud ; 

Let her sneer, let her say your experiment fails. 

In her voice there's a tremble e'en now while she rails, 

And your shore will soon be in the nature of things 

Covered thick with gilt driftwood of runaway kings, 

Where alone, as it were in a Longfellow's Waif, 

Her fugitive pieces will find themselves safe. 

O, my friends, thank your God, if you have one, that he 

'Twixt the Old World and you set the gulf of a sea ; 

Be strong-backed, brown-handed, upright as your pines, 

By the scale of a hemisphere shape your designs. 

Be true to yourselves and this new nineteenth age. 

As a statue by Powers, or a picture by Page, 

Plough, dig, sail, forge, build, carve, paint, make all things new, 

To your own New- World instincts contrive to be true, 

Keep your ears open wide to the Future's first call, 

Be whatever you will, but yourselves first of all. 

Stand fronting the dawn on Toil's heaven-scaling peaks, 

And become my new race of more practical Greeks.— 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 53 

Hem ! your likeness at present, I shudder to tell o't, 

Is that you have your slaves, and the Greek had his helot." 

Here a gentleman present, who had in his attic 
More pepper than brains, shrieked — " The man 's a fanatic, 
T'am a capital tailor with warm tar and feathers, 
And will make him a suit that '11 serve in all weathers ; 
But we'll argue the point first, I'm willing to reason 't, 
Palaver before condemnation 's but decent, 
So, through my humble person. Humanity begs 
Of the friends of true freedom a loan of bad eggs." 
But Apollo let one such a look of his show forth 
As when r^u vixxl ioixwc, and so forth, 
And the gentleman somehow slunk out of the way, 
But, as he was going, gained courage to say, — 
" At slavery in the abstract my whole soul rebels, 
I am as strongly opposed to't as any one else." 
" Ay, no doubt, but whenever I've happened to meet 
With a wrong or a crime, it is always concrete," 
Answered Phoebus severely ; then turning to us, 
"The mistakes of such fellows as just made the fuss 
Is only in taking a great busy nation 
For a part of their pitiful cotton-plantation. — 
But there comes Miranda, Zeus ! where shall I f!ee to ? 
She has such a penchant for bothering me too ! 



54 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

She always keeps asking if I don't observe a 

Particular likeness 'tvvixt her and Minerva ; 

She tells me niy efforts in verse are quite clever ; — 

She's been travelling now, and will be worse than ever ; 

One would think, though, a sharp-sighted noter she'd be 

Of all that's worth mentioning over the sea, 

For a woman must surely see well, if she try, 

The whole of whose being's a capital I : 

She will take an old notion, and make it her own. 

By saying it o'er in her Sybilline tone, 

Or persuade you 'tis something tremendously deep, 

By repeating it so as to put you to sleep ; 

And she well may defy any mortal to see through it, 

When once she has mixed up her infinite me through it. 

There is one thing she owns in her own single right. 

It is native and genuine — namely, her spite : 

Though, when acting as censor, she privately blows 

A censor of vanity 'neath her own nose." 

Here Miranda came up, and said, " Phoebus ! you know 
That the infinite Soul has its infinite woe, 
As I ought to know, having lived cheek by jowl, 
Since the day I was born, with the Infinite Soul ; 
I myself introduced, I myself, I alone. 
To my Land's belter life authors solely my own. 
Who the sad heart of earth on their shoulders have taken, 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 55 

Whose works sound a depth by Life's quiet unshaken, 
Such as Shakspeare, for instance, the Bible, and Bacon, 
Not to mention my own works ; Time's nadir is fleet. 
And, as for myself, I'm quite out of conceit," — 

" Quite out of conceit ! I'm enchanted to hear it," 
Cried Appollo aside, " Who'd have thought she was near it ? 
To be sure onp is apt to exhaust those commodities 
He uses too fast, yet in this case as odd it is 
As if Neptune should say to his turbots and whitings, 
' I'm as much out of salt as Miranda's own writings,' 
(Which, as she in her own happy manner has said, 
Sound a depth, for 'tis one of the functions of lead.) 
She often has asked me if I could not find 
A place somewhere near me that suited her mind ; 
I know but a single one vacant, which she. 
With her rare talent that way, would fit to a T. 
And it would not imply any pause or cessation 
In the work she esteems her peculiar vocation, — 
She may enter oq duty to-day, if she chooses. 
And remain Tiring- woman for life to the Muses." 

(Miranda meanwhile has succeeded in driving 
Up into a corner, in spite of their striving, 
A small flock of terrified victims, and there, 
With an I-turn-the-crank-of-the-Universe air 



56 A FABLE FOR THE CBITICS. 

And a lone which, at least to my fancy, appears 

Not so much to be entering as boxing your ears, 

Is unfolding a tale (of herself, I surmise,) 

For 'tis dotted as thick as a peacock's with I's.) 

Apropos of Miranda, I'll rest on my oars 

And drift through a trifling digression on bores, 

For, though not wearing ear-rings in more majorurrif 

Our ears are kept bored just as if we still wore 'em. 

There was one feudal custom worth keeping, at least, 

Roasted bores made a part of each well-ordered feast, 

And of all quiet pleasures the very ne plus 

Was in hunting wild bores as the tame ones hunt us. 

Archseologians, I know, who have personal fears 

Of this wise application of hounds and of spears, 

Have tried to make out, with a zeal more than wonted, 

'Twas a kind of wild swine that our ancestors hunted ; 

But I'll never believe that the age which has strewn 

Europe o'er with cathedrals, and otherwise shown 

That it knew what was what, could by chance not have known, 

(Spending, too, its chief time with its buff on, no doubt,) 

Which beast 'twould improve the world most to thin out. 

I divide bores myself, in the manner of rifles, 

Into two great divisions, regardless of trifles ; — 

There's your smooth-bore and screw-bore, who do not much 

vary 
In the weight of cold lead they respectively carry. 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 57 

The smooth-bore is one in whose essence the mind 

Not a corner nor cranny to cling by can find ; 

You feel as in nightmares sometimes, when you slip 

Down a steep slated roof where there's nothing to grip, 

You slide and you slide, the blank horror increases, 

You had rather by far be at once smashed to pieces, 

You fancy a whirlpool below white and frothing, 

And finally drop off and light upon — nothing. 

The screw-bore has twists in him, faint predilections 

For going just wrong in the tritest directions; 

When he's wrong he is fiat, when he's right he can't show il^ 

He'll tell you what Snooks said about the new poet,* 

Or how Fogrum was outraged by Tennyson's Princess ; 

He has spent all his spare time and intellect since his 

Birth in perusing, on each art and science, 

Just the books in which no one puts any reliance, 

And though nemo, we're told, horis omnibus sapit, 

The rule will not fit him, however you shape it, 

For he has a perennial foison of sappiness ; 

He has just enough force to spoil half your day's happiness, 

And to make him a sort of mosquito to be with. 

But just not enough to dispute or agree with. 

These sketches I made (not to be too explicit) 
From two honest fellows who made me a visit, 

* (If you call Snooks an owl, he will show by his looks 
That he's morally certain you're jealous of Snooks.) 



58 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

And broke, like the tale of the Bear and the Fiddle, 

My reflections on Halleck short off by the middle ; 

I shall not now go into the subject more deeply, 

For I notice that some of my readers look sleep'ly, 

I will barely remark that, 'mongst civilized nations. 

There's none that displays more exemplary patience 

Under all sorts of boring, at all sorts of hours, 

From all sorts of desperate persons, than ours. 

Not to speak of our papers, our State legislatures, 

And other such trials for sensitive natures. 

Just look for a moment at Congress, — appalled. 

My fancy shrinks back from the phantom it called ; 

Why, there's scarcely a member unworthy to frown 

'Neath what Fourier nicknames the Boreal crown ; 

Only think what that infinite bore-pow'r could do 

If applied with a utilitarian view ; 

Suppose, for example, we shipped it with care 

To Sahara's great desert and let it bore there. 

If they held one short session and did nothing else, 

They'd fill the whole waste with Artesian wells. 

But 'tis tune now with pen phonograpliic to follow 

Through some more of his sketches our laughing Appollo 

'' There comes Harry Franco, and, as he draws near, 
You find that's a smile which you took for a sneer; 
One half of him contradicts t'other, his wont 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 59 

Is to say very sharp things and do very blunt ; 

His manner 's as hard as his feelings are tender, 

And a sortie he'll make when he means to surrender ; 

He's in joke half the time when he seems to be sternest, 

When he seems to be joking, be sure he's in earnest; 

He has common sense in a way that's uncommon, 

Hates humbug and cant, loves his friends like a woman, 

Builds his dislikes of cards and his friendships of oak, 

Loves a prejudice better than aught but a joke, 

Is half upright Quaker, half downright Come-outer, 

Loves Freedom too well to go stark mad about her. 

Quite artless himself is a lover of Art, 

Shuts you out of his secrets and into his heart. 

And though not a poet, yet all must admire 

In his letters of Pinto his skill on the liar. 

" There comes Poe with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge, 
Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge, 
Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters, 
In a way to make people of common-sense damn metres. 
Who has written some things quite the best of their kind, 
But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind, 
Who — but hey-day ! What's this? Messieurs Mathews and Pee, 
you. mustn't fling mud-balls at Longfellow so. 
Does it make a man worse that his character's such 
As to make his friends love him (as you think) too much ? 



GO A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

Why, there is not a bard at this moment alive 

More willing than he that his fellows should thrive ; 

While you are abusing him thus, even now 

He would help either one of you out of a slough ; 

You may say that he's smooth and all that till you're hoarse, 

But remember that elegance also is force ; 

After polishing granite as much as you will, 

The heart keeps its tough old persistency still ; 

Deduct all you can that still keeps you at bay, — 

Why, he'll live till men weary of Collins and Gray ; 

I'm not over-fond of Greek metres in English, 

To me rhyme 's a gain, so it be not too jinglish, 

And your modern hexameter verses are no more 

Like Greek ones than sleek Mr. Pope is like Homer; 

As the roar of the sea to the coo of a pigeon is. 

So, compared to your moderns, sounds old Melesigenes ; 

I may be too partial, the reason, perhaps, o't is 

That I've heard the old blind man recite his own rhapsodies, 

And my ear with that music impregnate may be, 

Like the poor exiled shell with the soul of the sea, 

Or as one can't bear Strauss when his nature is cloven 

To its deeps within deeps by the stroke of Beethoven ; 

But, set that aside, and 'tis truth that 1 speak. 

Had Theocritus written in English, not Greek, 

I believe that his exquisite sense would scarce change a line 

In that rare, tender, virgin-like pastoral Evangeline. 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 61 

That's not ancient nor modern, its place is apart 
Where time has no sway, in the rsalm of pure Art, 
'Tis a shrine of retreat from Earth's hubbub and strife 
As quiet and chaste as the author's own life. 

" There comes Philothea, her face all a-glow, 
She has just been dividing some poor creature's woe 
And can't tell which pleases her most, to relieve 
His want, or his story to hear and believe ; 
No doubt aojainst many deep griefs she prevails, 
For her ear is the refuge of destitute tales ; 
She knows well that silence is sorrow's best food, 
And that talking draws off from the heart its black blood, 
So she'll listen with patience and let you unfold 
Your bundle of rags as 'twere pure cloth of gold, 
Which, indeed, it all turns to as soon as she's touched it. 
And, do borrow a phrase from the nursery.) mucked it, 
She has such a musical taste, she will go 
Any distance to hear one who draws a long bow ; 
She will swallow a wonder by mere might and main 
And thinks it geometry's fault if she's fain 
To consider things flat, inasmuch as they're plain ; 
Facts with her are accomplished, as Frenchmen would say 
They will prove all she wishes them to — either way. 
And, as fact lies on this side or that, we must try. 
If we're seeking the truth, to find where it don't lie ; 



02 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

I was telling her once of a marvellous aloe 

That for thousands of years had looked spindling and sallow, 

And, though nursed by the fruitfullest powers of mud, 

Had never vouchsafed e'en so much as a bud, 

Till its owner remarked, as a sailor, you know, 

Often will in a calm, that it never would blow. 

For he wished to exhibit the plant, and designed 

That its blowing should help him in raising the wind ; 

At last it was told him that if he should water 

Its roots with the blood of his unmarried daughter, 

CWho was born, as her mother, a Calvinist said, 

With a Baxter's effectual call on her head,) 

It would blow as the obstinate breeze did when by a 

Like decree of her father died Iphigenia ; 

At first he declared he himself would be blowed 

Ere his conscience with such a foul crime he would load, 

But the thought, coming oft, grew less dark than before, 

And he mused, as each creditor knocked at his door, 

If this were but done they would dun me no more ; 

I told Philothea his struggles and doubts. 

And how he considered the ins and the outs 

Of the visions he had, and the dreadful dyspepsy. 

How he went to the seer that lives at Po'keepsie, 

How the seer advised him to sleep on it first 

And to read his big volume in case of the worst, 

And further advised he should pay him five dollars 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 03 

For writing JEfUItt, l^Um, on his wristbands and collars; 

Three years and ten days these dark words he had studied 

When the daughter was missed, and the aloe had budded ; 

I told how he watched it grow large and more large, 

And wondered how much for the show he should charge,— 

She had listened with utter indifference to this, till 

I told how it bloomed, and discharging its pistil 

With an aim the Eumenides dictated, shot 

The botanical filicide dead on the spot ; 

It had blown, but he reaped not his horrible gains, 

For it blew with such force as to blow out his brains, 

And the crime was blown also, because on the wad. 

Which was paper, was writ ' Visitation of God,' 

As well as a thrilling account of the deed 

Which the coroner kindly allowed me to read. 

" Well, my friend took this story up just, to be sure. 
As one might a poor foundling that's laid at one's door 
She combed it and washed it and clothed it and fed it. 
And as if 'twere her own child most tenderly bred it, 
Laid the scene (of the legend, I mean,) far away a- 
-mong the green valies underneath Himalaya. 
And by artist-like touches, laid on here and there. 
Made the whole thing so touching, I frankly declare 
I have read it all thrice, and, perhaps I am weak. 
But I found every time there were tears on my cheek. 



64 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

" The pole, science tells us, the magnet controls, 
But she is a magnet to emigrant Poles, 
And folks with a mission that nobody knows, 
Throng thickly about her as bees round a rose ; 
She can fill up the carets in such, make their scope 
Converge to some focus of rational hope, 
And, with sympathies fresh as the morning, their gall 
Can transmute into honey, — but this is not all ; 
Not only for those she has solace, oh, say, 
Vice's desperate nursling adrift in Broadway, 
Who clingest, wiih all that is left of thee human. 
To the last slender spar from the wreck of the woman, 
Hast thou not found one shore where those tired drooping feet 
Could reach firm mother-earth, one full heart on whose beat 
The soothed head in silence reposing could hear 
The chimes of far childhood throb thick on the ear ? 
Ah, there's many a beam from the fountain of day 
That to reach us unclouded, must pass, on its way. 
Through the soul of a woman, and hers is wide ope 
To the influence of Heaven as the blue eyes of Hope ; 
Yes, a great soul is hers, one that dares to go in 
To the prison, the slave-hut, the alleys of sin. 
And to bring into each, or to find there, some line 
Of the never completely out-trampled divine ; 
If her heart at high floods swamps her brain now and then, \ 
'Tis but richer for that when the tide ebbs agen, 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 0.7 

As, after old Nile has subsided, his plain 
Overflows with a second broad deluge of grain; 
What a wealth would it bring to the narrow and sour 
Could they be as a Child but for one little hour ! 

"What ! Irving? thrice welcome, warm heart and fine brain, 
You bring back the happiest spirit from Spain, 
And the gravest sweet humor, that ever were there 
Since Cervantes met death in his gentle despair ; 
Nay, don't be embarrassed, nor look so beseeching, — 
I shan't run directly against my own preaching. 
And, having just laughed at their Raphaels and Dantes, 
Go to setting you up beside matchless Cervantes ; 
But allow me to speak what I honestly feel, — 
To a true poet-heart add fhe fun of Dick Steele, 
Throw in all of Addison, minus the chill. 
With the whole of that partnership's stock and good will, 
Mix well, and while stirring, hum o'er, as a spell. 
The fine old English Gentleman, simmer it well, 
Sweeten just to your own private liking, then strain, 
That only the finest and clearest remain, 
Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receives 
From the warm lazy sun loitering down through green leaves, 
And you'll find a choice nature, not wholly deserving 
\ name either English or Yankee, — just Irving. 



60 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

'* There goes, — but siet nominis umbra, — his name 
You'll be glad enough, some day or other, to claim, 
And will all crowd about him and swear that you knew him 
If some English hack-critic should chance to review him ; 
The old porcos ante ne projiciatis 
Margaritas, for him you have verified gratis ; 
What matters his name ? Why, it may be Sylvester, 
Judd, Junior, or Junius, Ulysses, or Nestor, 
For aught I know or care ; 'tis enough that I look 
On the author of ' Margaret,' the first Yankee book 
With the soul of Down East in't, and things farther East, 
As far as the threshold of morning, at least. 
Where awaits the fair dawn of the simple and true. 
Of the day that comes slowly to make all things new. 
'T has a smack of pine woods, of bare field and bleak hill 
Such as only the breed of the Mayflower could till ; 
The Puritan 's shown in it, tough to the core. 
Such as prayed, smiting Agag on red Marston moor; 
With an unwilling humor, half-choked by the drouth 
In brown hollows about the inhospitable mouth ; 
With a soul full of poetry, though it has qualms 
About finding a happiness out of the Psalms ; 
Full of tenderness, too, though it shrinks in the dark. 
Hamadryad-like, under the coarse, shaggy bark ; 
That sees visions, knows wrestlings of God with the Will, 
And has its own Sinais and thunderings still." — 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 67 

Here, — " Forgive me, Apollo," I cried, " while I pour 
My heart out to my birth-place : O, loved more and more 
Dear Baystate, from whose rocky bosom thy sons 
Should suck milk, strong-will-giving, brave, such as runs 
In the veins of old Graylock, — who is it that dares 
Call thee pedler, a soul wrapt in bank-books and shares ? 
It is false ! She's a Poet ! I see, as I write. 
Along the far railroad the steam-snake glide white, 
The cataract-throb of her mill-hearts I hear, 
The swift strokes of trip-hammers weary my ear. 
Sledges ring upon anvils, through logs the saw screams, 
Blocks swing up to their place, beetles drive home the beams : — 
It is songs such as these that she croons to the din 
Of her fast-flying shuttles, year out and year in. 
While from earth's farthest corner there comes not a breeze 
But wafts her the buzz of her gold-gleaning bees : 
What though those horn hands have as yet found small time 
For painting and sculpture and music and rhyme ? 
These will come in due order, the need that pressed sorest 
Was to vanquish the seasons, the ocean, the forest, 
To bridle and harness the rivers, the steam, 
Making that whirl her mill-wheels, this tug in her team, 
To vassalize old tyrant Winter, and m^ike 
Him delve surlily for her on river and lake ; — 
When this New World was parted, she strove not to shirk 
Her lot in the heirdom, the tough, silent Work, 



68 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

The hero-share ever, from Herakles down 

To Odin, the Earth's iron sceptre and crown ; 

Yes, thou dear, noble Mother ! if ever men's praise 

Couid be claimed for creating heroical lays, 

Thou hast won it ; if ever the laurel divine 

Crowned the Maker and Builder, that glory is thine ! 

Thy songs are right epic, they tell how this rude 

Rock-rib of our earth here was tamed and subdued ; 

Thou hast written them plain on the face of the planet 

In brave, deathless letters of iron and granite ; 

Thou hast printed them deep for all time ; they are set 

From the same runic type-fount and alphabet 

With thy stout Berkshire hills and the arms of thy Bay, — 

They are staves from the burly old Mayflower lay. 

If the drones of the Old World, in querulous ease, 

Ask thy Art and thy Letters, point proudly to these, 

Or, if they deny these are Letters and Art, 

Toil on with the same old invincible heart ; 

Thou art rearing the pedestal broad-based and grand 

Whereon the fair shapes of the Artist shall stand, 

And creating, through labors undaunted and long, 

The true theme for all Sculpture and Painting and Song ! 

" But my good mother Baystate wants no praise of mine, 
She learned from her mother a' precept divine 
About something that butters no parsnips, her forte 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 69 

In another direction lies, work is her sport, 

(Though she'll curtsey and set her cap straight, that she will, 

If you talk about Plymouih and one Bunker's hill.) 

The dear, notable good wife ! by this time of night, 

Her hearth is swept clean, and her fire burning bright, 

And she sits in a chair (of home plan and make) rocking, 

Musing much, all the while, as she darns on a stocking. 

Whether turkeys will come pretty high next Thanksgiving, 

Whether flour '11 be so dear, for, as sure as she's living, 

She will use rye-and-injun then, whether the pig 

By this time ain't got pretty tolerable big, 

And whether to sell it outright will be best. 

Or to smoke hams and shoulders and salt down the rest, — 

At this minute, she'd swop all my verses, ah, cruel ! 

For the last patent stove that is saving of fuel ; 

So I'll just let Apollo go on, for his phiz 

Shows I've kept him awaiting too long as it is." 

" If our friend, there, who seems a reporter, is through 
With his burst of emotion, our theme we'll pursue," 
Said Apollo ; some smiled, and, indeed, I must own 
There was something sarcastic, perhaps, in his tone ; — 

" There's Holmes, who is matchless among you for wit ; 
A Leyden-jar always full-charged, from which flit 
The electrical tingles of hit after hit ; 



70 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

In long poems 'tis painful sometimes and invites 

A thought of the way the new Telegraph writes, 

Which pricks down its little sharp sentences spitefully 

As if you got more than you'd title to rightfully, 

And if it were hoping its wild father Lightning 

Would flame in for a second and give you a fright'ning. 

He has perfect sway of what / call a sham metre, 

But 'many admire it, the English hexameter. 

And Campbell, I think, wrote most commonly worse. 

With less nerve, swing, and fire in the same kind of verse, 

Nor e'er achieved aught in't so worthy of praise 

As the tribute of Holmes to the grand Marseillaise. 

You went crazy last year over Bulwer's New Timon ; — 

Why, if B., to the day of his dying, should rhyme on, 

Heaping verses on verses and tomes upon tomes. 

He could ne'er reach the best point and vigor of Holmes. 

His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric 

Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satyrio 

In so kindly a measure, that nobody knows 

What to do but e'en join in the laugh, friends and foes. 

" There is Lowell, who's striving Parnassus to climb 
With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme. 
He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders, 
But he can't with that bundle he has on his shoulders, 
The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 71 

Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching ; 
His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well, 
But he'd rather by half make a drum of the shell, 
And rattle away till he's old as Methusalem, 
At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem. 

" There goes Halleck, whose Fanny's a pseudo Don Juan, 
With the wickedness out that gave salt to the true one. 
He's a wit, though, I hear, of the very first order, 
And once made a pun on the words soft Recorder ; 
More than this, he's a very great poet, I'm told. 
And has had his works published in crimson and gold, 
With something they call ' Illustrations,' to wit. 
Like those with which Chapman obscured Holy Writ,* 
Which art said to illustrate, because, as I view it, 
Like lacus a non, they precisely don't do it ; 
Let a man who can write what himself understands 
Keep clear, if he can, of designing men's hands, 
Who bury the sense, if there's any worth having, 
And then very honestly call it engraving. 
But, to quit badinage, which there isn't much wit in, 
No doubt Halleck's better than all he has written ; 
In his verse a clear glimpse you will frequently find, 
If not of a great, of a fortunate mind. 
Which contrives to be true to its natural loves 

* (Cuts rightly called wooden, as all must admit.) 



72 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

In a world of back-offices, ledgers and stoves. 

When his heart breaks away from the brokers and banks, 

And kneels in its own private shrine to give thanks, 

There's a genial manliness in him that earns 

Our sincerest respect, (read, for instance, his "Burns,") 

And we can't but regret (seek excuse where we may) 

That so much of a man has been peddled away. 

" But what's that ? a mass-meeting ? No, there come in lots 
The American Disraelis, Bulwers, and Scotts, 
And in short the American everytliing-elses. 
Each charging the others with envies and jealousies ; — 
By the way, 'tis a fact that displays what profusions 
Of all kinds of greatness bless free institutions, 
That while the Old World has produced barely eight 
Of such poets as all men agree to call great, 
And of other great characters hardly a score, 
(One might safely say less than that rather than more,) 
With you every year a whole crop is begotten, 
They're as much of a staple as corn, or as cotton ; 
Why, there's scarcely a huddle of log-huts and shanties 
That has not brought forth its own Mihons and Dantes; 
I myself know ten Byrons, one Coleridge, three Shelleys, 
Two Raphaels, six Titians, (I think) one Apelles, 
Leonardos and Rubenses plenty as lichens, 
One (but that one is .plenty) American Dickens, 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 7.1 

A whole flock of Lambs, any number of Tennysons, — 

In short, if a man has the luck to have any sons, 

He may feel pretty certain that one out of twain 

Will be some very great person over again. 

There is one inconvenience in all this which lies 

In the fact that by contrast we estimate size,* 

And, where there are none except Titans, great stature 

Is only a simple proceeding of nature. 

What puff the strained sails of your praise shall you furl at, if 

The calmest degree that you know is superlative ? 

At Rome, all whom Charon took into his wherry must, 

As a matter of course, be well issimiised and errimused, 

A Greek, too, could feel, while in that famous boat he tost, 

That his friends would take care he was caToged and wTWToged, 

And formerly we, as through grave-yards we past. 

Thought the world went from bad to worse fearfully fast ; 

Let us glance for a moment, 'tis well worth the pains, 

And note what an average grave-yard contains ; 

There lie levellers levelled, duns done up themselves, 

There are booksellers finally laid on their shelves. 

Horizontally there lie upright politicians, 

Dose-a-dose with their patients sleep faultless physicians. 

There are slave-drivers quietly whipt under-ground, 

* That is in most cases we do, but not all. 

Past a doubt, there are men who are innately smnll, 
Such as Blank, who, without bt-iiig 'miiiished a tittle. 
Might stand for a type of the Absolute Little. 



74 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

There bookbinders, done up in boards, are fast bound, 
There card-players wait till the last trump be played, 
There all the choice spirits get finally laid, 
There the babe that's unborn is supplied with a berth, 
There men without legs get their six feet of earth, 
There lawyers repose, each wrapt up in his case, 
There seekers of office are sure of a place. 
There defendant and plaintiff get equally cast, 
There shoemakers quietly stick to the last, 
There brokers at length become silent as stocks. 
There stage-drivers sleep without quitting their box. 
And so forth and so forth and so forth and so on, 
With this kind of stuff one might endlessly go on ; 
To come to the point, I may safely assert you 
Will find in each yard every cardinal virtue ;* 
Each has six truest patriots : four discoverers of ether. 
Who never had thought on't nor mentioned it either : 
Ten poets, the greatest who ever wrote rhyme ; 
Two hundred and forty first men of their time : 
One person whose portrait just gave the least hint 
Its original had a most horrible squint : 
One critic, most (what do they call it ?) reflective. 
Who never had used the phrase ob- or subjective : 
Forty fathers of Freedom, of whom twenty bred 

* (And at this just conclusion will surely arrive. 

That the goodness of earth is more dead than alive.) 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 75 

Their sons tor the rice-swamps, at so much a head, 

And their daughters for — faugh ! thirty mothers of Gracchi : 

Non-resistants who gave many a spiritual black-eye : 

Eight true friends of their kind, one of whom was a jailor : 

Four captains almost as astounding as Taylor : 

Two dozen of Italy's exiles who shoot us hi^ 

Kaisership daily, stern pen-and-ink Brutuses, 

Who, in Yankee back-parlors, with crucified smile,* 

Mount serenely their country's funereal pile : 

Ninety-nine Irish heroes, ferocious rebellers 

'Gainst the Saxon in cis-marine garrets and cellars. 

Who shake their dread fists o'er the sea and all that, — 

As long as a copper drops into the hat : 

Nine hundred Teutonic republicans stark 

From Vaterland's battles just won — in the Park, 

Who the happy profession of martyrdom take 

Whenever it gives them a chance at a steak : 

Sixty-two second Washingtons : two or three Jacksons : 

And so many everythings else that it racks one's 

Poor memory too much to continue the list, 

Especially now they no longer exist ; — 

I would merely observe that you 've taken to giving 

The puffs that belong to the dead to the living. 

And that somehow your trump-of-contemporary-doom's tones 

Is tuned after old dedications and tombstones." — 

* Not forgetting their tea and their toast, though, the while 



76 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

Here the critic came in and a thistle presented* — ■ 
From a frown to a smile the god's features relented, 
As he stared at his envoy, who, swelling with prid^^ 
To the god's asking look, nothing daunted, replied, 
" You're surprised, 1 suppose, I was absent so long, 
But your godship respecting the lilies was wrong ; 
I hunted the garden from one end to t'other. 
And got no reward but vexation and bother, 
Till, tossed out with weeds in a corner to wither, 
This one lily I found and made haste to bring hither." 

" Did he think I had given him a book to review ? 
I ought to have known what the fellow would do," 
Muttered Phcebus aside, " for a thistle will pass 
Beyond doubt for the queen of all flowers with an ass ; 
He has chosen in just the same way as he'd choose 
His specimens out of the books he reviews ; 
And now, as this offers an excellent text, 
I'll give 'em some brief hints on criticism next." 
So, musing a moment, he turned to the crowd. 
And, clearing his voice, spoke as follows aloud, — 

" My friends, in the happier days of the muse, 
We were luckily free from such things as reviews ; 

* Turn back now to pTge — goodness only knows what. 
And lake a fresh hold on the thread of my plot. 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 77 

Then naught came between with its fog to make clearer 

The heart of the poet to that of his hearer ; 

Then the poet brought heaven to the people, and they 

Felt that they, too, were poets in hearing his lay ; 

Then the poet was prophet, the past in his soul 

Pre-created the future, both parts of one whole; 

Then for him there was nothing too great or too small, 

For one natural deity sanctified all; 

Then the bard owned no clipper and meter of moods 

Save the spirit of silence that hovers and broods 

O'er the seas and the mountains, the rivers and woods ; 

He asked not earth's verdict, forgetting the clods, 

His soul soared and sang to an audience of gods ; 

'Twas for them that he measured the thought and the. line, 

And shaped for their vision the perfect design, 

Wiih as glorious a foresight, a balance as true, 

As swung out the worlds in the infinite blue ; 

Then a glory and greatness invested man's heart, 

The universal, which now stands estranged and apart, 

In the free individual moulded, was Art ; 

Then the forms of the Artist seemed thrilled with desire 

For something as yet unattained, fuller, higher, 

As once with her lips, lifted hands, and eyes listening, 

And her whole upward soul in her countenance glistening, 

Eurydice stood — like a beacon unfired, 

Which, once touchd with flame, will leap heav'nward inspired — 



78 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

And waited with answering kindle to mark 

The first gleam of Orpheus that pained the red Dark ; 

Then painting, song, sculpture, did more than relieve 

The meed that men feel to create and believe, 

And as, in all beauty, who listens with love, 

Hears these words oft repeated — ' beyond and above,' 

So these seemed to be but the visible sign 

Of the grasp of the soul after things more divine ; 

They were ladders the Artist erected to climb 

O'er the narrow horizon of space and of time, 

And we see there the footsteps by which men had gained 

To the one rapturous glimpse of the never-attained, 

As shepherds could erst sometimes trace in the sod 

The last spurning print of a sky-cleaving god. 

" But now, on the poet's dis-privacied moods 
With do this and do that the pert critic intrudes ; 
While he thinks he's been barely fulfilling his duty 
To interpret 'twixt men and their own sense of beauty, 
And has striven, while others sought honor or pelf, 
To make his kind happy as he was himself, 
He finds he's been guilty of horrid oflTences 
In all kinds of moods, numbers, genders, and tenses ; 
He's been ol and swJjective, what Kettle calls Pot, 
Precisely, at all events, what he ought not. 



A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. lb 

You have done this, says one judge ; done that, says another ; 

You should have done this, grumbles one; that, says t'other; 

Never mind what he touches, one shrieks out Taioo * 

And while he is wondering what he shall do; 

Since each suggests opposite topics for song, 

They all shout together you're right ! or youWt wrong / 

" Nature fits all her children v.'ith something to do, 
He who would write and can't write, can surely review, 
Can set up a small booth as critic and sell us his 
Petty conceit and his pettier jealousies ; 
Thus a lawyer's apprentice, just out of his teens, 
Will do for the Jeffrey of six magazines ; 
Having read Johnson's lives of the poets half through, 
There's nothing on earth he's not competent to ; 
He reviews with as much nonchalance as he whistles, — 
He goes through a book and just picks out the thistles. 
It matters not whether he blame or commend, 
If he's bad as a foe, he's far worse as a friend ; 
Let an author but write what's above his poor scope. 
And he'll go to work gravely and twist up a rope, 
And, inviting the world to see punishment done, 
Hang himself up to bleach in the wind and the sun ; 
'Tis delightful to see, when a man comes along 
Who has any thing in him peculiar and strong, 



80 A FABLE FOR THE CRITICS. 

Every cockboat that swims clear its fierce (pop-) gundeck at 

him 
And make as he passes its ludicrous Peck at him," — . 

Here Miranda came up and began, " As to that,"— 
\pollo at once seized his gloves, cane, and hat, 
And, seeing the place getting rapidly cleared, 
T, too, snatched my notes and forthwith disappeared. 



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